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40" OLED Television Revealed at SID
deglr6328 writes "Seiko Epson has unveiled a massive 40 inch OLED display prototype at this years Society for Information Display (SID) symposium in Seattle. The display was printed on to a backplane containing the drive electronics with a specialized inkjet process using Phillip's PolyLED technology. Samsung and Phillips also showed large scale OLEDs they say can also be scaled up to 'television sizes.'"
They've still got development to do. 260,000 colours aren't enough!
Why is the lady in that picture purple? Is the display that bright that she matches the flowers? Or is there some funky radiation coming out of that thing that has given her a nice glowing purple tan?
My god, porn is going to look horribly dithered on this thing. Maybe by the time it is market viable they'll have that fixed.
That the Epson display is not a single display at all (in that it isn't printed in one process), but a combination of smaller ones, more along the sizes of the Philips and Samsung ones.
I have seen the Philips display and I have to say the quality was good, there is slight horizontal banding where runs of the print head touch, but that's something that can be ironed out. Not quite up to consumer TV standards, maybe, but certainly showing promise.
The particular display mentioned has size, not resolution as its main quality; some of the other displays mentioned have high resolutions.
Which kinds of UI will benefit from such displays?
Can we expect something useful from e.g. virtual 3D viewing (remember those books with embedded 3D-items hidden in 2D pictures)?
-- From Denmark
This is pretty cool, and it's actually one thing my research is tied to. I dunno how long it's gonna take but we're hoping to be able to print these things on a variety of press types, at much faster speeds than inkjet allowing the product to be a lot less expensive.
Right now though it's too costly and inkjet is definitely not ideal for large scale production, but we're definitely headed in the right direction. The biggest issue is finding materials that will work in the product that can be printed. It's a big PITA.
That and how long with the OLED display they've built last? OLEDs don't like oxygen and the damn things will basically decompose. For large expensive displays like that there's still concerns in that area.
Either way, awesome approach, using the different colored nozzles is pretty clever, a lot of the current systems require separate coatings to be applied through various means. It'll still be a lot faster and cheaper down the road when large presses can be used.
Someone here made a calculation, and if we could print at 2000fpm on our Sunday 2000 Heidelberg press, all the displays in the world could be printed in a couple hours. Not like that would be practical or even likely.
Presently here, but not there.
One word: COST.
I read a little while ago about how when OLED displays age they loose there color. At the time I thought that while a TV may look nice at first, who wants to spend a grand on a TV that is gonna look bad in a couple of years.
I was assuming of course that the price point of a large screen OLED would be comparable to a large screen LCD which is comparable to a traditional set.
Sometimes it is nice to be wrong.
Basicaly it sounds to me like they create a large circuit board and 'print' the pixels on top of it with a large ink jet printer.
I know I am simplifying it tremendously, but it sounds a hell of a lot less costly then traditional and LCD sets.
Am I right to assume that something like this could seriously come down in price?
I imagine that eventually the price point would be so that when the colors faded you pitched the old set, bought a new one and thought nothing more of it then if you were upgrading a video game console.
http://optics.org/articles/news/10/6/4/1/samsung
This is photoshopped. The image on the screen is more clear that the detail of the stand it is framed in. The detail of the image on the screen and the fram should be on a par. But they are not.
That is BS. Credit of the photo is samsung themselves, so nobody outside of samsung saw it for real.
I am not saying samsung doesn't have an OLED display, I am just saying that that picture is a crock of PR shit if ever I saw one.
I am hoping I am wrong and we get awesome screens in the future.... but I just can't believe that photo.
You must also be suspicious of me being a samsung astroturfer "I can't believe it".
tinfoil hats abound
Funnily enough you're not simplifying it a great deal. Clearly it's not easy to actually do, but what they're actually trying to do is effectively just that.
No reason why it couldn't come down in price just like anything else. More importantly though the lifetime of the OLEDs is increasing, it's hoped that by 2008/2009 they'll be good enough to be used in commercial TV sets properly.
As allways in these OLED dicussions the question is: /. brings a story about that, ThEn OLEDs gets really really interesting (as opposed to now: they are 'just' really interesting;)
How long before the display starts to degrade?
In other words: Have they solved the problem with OLEDs that they start degrading after a record holding short time?
When
imagine that eventually the price point would be so that when the colors faded you pitched the old set, bought a new one and thought nothing more of it then if you were upgrading a video game console.
Great, now we're churning out even more consumer waste to put in landfills.
How can this make you happy?
Maybe if we're lucky it'll be more easily recyclable than a CRT (i.e., it won't have all the lead and stuff), but you're right that going from a long-lasting device to a disposable one isn't good.
At least it sounds more recycleable; it's apparantly a PCB + organic compound, which isn't that bad, right?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
But why is it that every single flat panel television is just completely too expensive? I love looking at them when I go shopping, but I fail to see the point in spending between $2000-$5000 for one of these displays. I don't care how many languages it speaks or what O/S it runs. What is the problem here? Is it really that expensive to produce large scale OLED/LCD/plasma displays? It seems regular ol' televisions have gone down in price, why not these larger flat panels? Is it going to be another 10-20 years before I can afford a reasonably priced unit?
Can any knowledgable slashdotter answer a simple question: Why is it difficult to produce large OLED display? I understand that it more or less amounts to printing the pixels onto a substrate. If one can make 17" OLED display, where is the engineering complexity in making a 40" display?
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
"who wants to spend a grand on a TV that is gonna look bad in a couple of years." You're an optimist. With today's OLED technology it will look bad in mere months. These things make plasma TVs seem like they were built to last a lifetime, by comparison. Last I've heard, OLEDs are rated for something like 1000 hours life. At, say, 8 hours a day use, that's 4 months. (And 8h per day is already less than you'll have it in use when it gets shared between you, your SO and maybe a kid using it for the game console.) But that's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that the brightness doesn't even decrease uniformly across the whole spectrum. Each of the 3 colour components has its own decay time. So it probably will take less than 4 months before the image starts to get a bit of a wrong hue. I don't know about you, but I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to image quality. I'm one of those nuts who bought a 9800 XT just to be able to play with 6x FSAA and 16x Aniso, and are already waiting for the X800 XT for the same reason. So something which is pretty much guaranteed to slowly go the wrong hue, I just don't need it. Not as a computer monitor, and not as a TV. Even if it was for free.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
This is pretty good. That's enough to do 720p HDTV, the second highest resolution. I mean the highest resolution worth having on a TV is 1920x1080, that's the max HDTV goes.
You also have to remember that bigger costs money as does higher res, and they are independant problems to deal with. That's why a 22" multi-sync computer monitor that does 2048x1536 costs more than a 36" NTSC TV with a tuner, PIP, etc. The NTSC TV onyl has to pull 720x480, makes it cheaper to produce at a given size.
I expect OLED displays will go the same as any other. You'll be able to get desk sized displays that meet or exceed the resolution of 60" displays. The reason is simple: Computer displays are used up close for precision work, and people will drop $500+ to have a high resolution one. Large displays are susually used for entertainment, and there's just a limit to how much resolution is worth the money. After all, a display that does 4000+ pixels across does you no good if you are driving it with an HDTV signal that is less than half that.
it's spelled `philips', not phillip's or phillips. Just look at the URL.
So long as the quality and price justify it. My speakers cost about $2000 for a pair of them. Because of that expense, I expect that they will last for quite a long time, and they will. They are well build, from materials that last. Provided they aren't abused, there's no reason they can't work for 20-50 years. However, if you could offer me speakers with equal or greater quality that cost only $100, but would last only a year, I'd buy them.
It's a win for me, any way you hash it. First, technology is going to improve enough in 20 years, that I'd want to replace my speakers before then anyhow. This lets me basically stay on the cutting edge all the time. Second, it makes damage much less of a worry. I have to be careful with these speakers, as it would be a major expense to replace them. I would not need to worry so much if I'd only be out $100. Finally, the value of a dollar today is more than the value of a dollar tomorrow (because of inflation). I'd be better of economically to spend $100/year and invest the rest than $2000 now.
All that OLEDs will need to do is be cheap enough in comparison to the competition, and the disposable idea works fine. If they cost as much as LCDs, no thaks, I'll take the LCD and be happy. If they cost 1/10th as much, sure I'll take them, even if they have to be replaced once a year.
This isn't out of the realm of possibility. Remember these things are PRINTED on sheets using ink jets. Cheap technology, and we have much cheaper mass-production printers called web presses. Also the only part that needs to be replaced is the OLED screen itself, not the supporting electronics. S0 it really could end up being like razor blades. But the more expensive holder (handle) up front and then replace the screen (blade) when it needs it.
As an added bonus, OLEDs are organic (hence the O) and so not nearly the environmental problem of things like CRTs, even if replaced more often.
When I was still at uni, studying numbercrunching, one of the thing the department (phys. chem.) was working on was trying to extend the lifespan of the blue colour OLED, and to invent a white one (the holy grail as it were), research sponsored by the EU I think. The best they had lasted mere months, whereas red and monochrome (yellowish iirc) lasted pretty much indefinitely.
I thought OLED's still had issues with durability.
Red & green lasting for 20.000 hrs, but blue for only about 2.000 hrs. They probably solved that problem, but I can't find any info on it.
I think the lifetime is more around 10,000 hours. In one of the recent /. discussions relating to OLEDs there was a discussion about this, can't seem to find it though. This article does mention 10,000 hours, and so does this very interesting OLED Technology Roadmap (PDF). It actually says about the performance targets that by 2004, the lifetime for 300 cd/m^2 should be about 10k hours, while for 2007 and 2010, the aim is 20k and respectively 40k hours. Note: I just skimmed that document, but it should be an interesting read...
"Last I've heard, OLEDs are rated for something like 1000 hours life."
That was a typo. The real number was 10,000 hours, and this is the time the blue component of an OLED display lasts before fading. The green and red components last about 20,000-30,000 hours. There is still a lot of improvement to be made in stabilizing the organic componenents of OLEDs, so expect those numbers to improve over time.
Also, don't forget that an LCD display last also about 10,000-15,000 hours, after which the backlight has to be replaced (usually about as, if not more expensive than buying a new display). CRTs don't last forever, either. After about 20,000 hours the brightness of a CRT will gradually degrade.
Considering that OLED is a relatively new technology it would be quite foolish to label it as being impractical/useless, since there is still a lot of room for improvement (we're looking at prototypes here!).
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
As a consumer option, this technology has a long way to go. As it stands now, with their 1000 hour life, uneven color decay, and the potential for waste buildup... no company would ever try to market this as a viable consumer product. The point of this demonstration is proof of concept. To that end I think they have done an incredible job. This is a brand new technology with some admitted faults, but they have sucessfully demonstrated that it has the potential to be commercially viable in the future. No one claims that it is a finished technology right now, so evaluating it as such doesn't make much sense.
"I really dont see why LCD monitors are so hot."
In general, LCD displays are a joke when compared to CRTs. However, aside from the space-saving features and the 'futuristic' look of 'flat displays', LCDs do have one saving (literally) feature: power-usage.
The CRT you mentioned in your post uses probably around 150-200 Watt whenever it's on and displaying something. This, coupled with the generated heat (some 'broken' monitors are fixed by modding them to include a fan) are the reason why large CRTs can be called 'hot, power-hungry beasts'.
OLEDs supposedly have all the benefits of CRTs (excellent IQ, plenty of colors), as well as those of TFTs (small in size), while using less power than TFTs.
Only thing I haven't any solid data on is the likelihood of dead pixels with OLED displays, although it can be assumed that this will be far more rare than with TFTs, considering that the production process is far less complex.
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
> Also, don't forget that an LCD display last also about 10,000-15,000 hours, after which the backlight has to be replaced (usually about as, if not more expensive than buying a new display).
That may be true for smaller (computer) displays, but not for HDTVs. RP LCD TVs themselves cost about $3000 for a 50" and the lightbulbs are well under $500.
The OLED industry should have been fully commercialized 4 years ago. However, for whatever reason, the industry didn't take a clue from the semiconductor folks and, as a result, has been reinventing the wheel the silcon industry invented 30 years ago. Time after time I hear the OLED manufacturers having problems with black spots on the screen (i.e. OLED device failure), resolution problems, and short display lifetime. I just shake my head because the silcon industry did the exact same thing 30 years ago. They have a purity problem, plain and simple. The silcon used in IC's today is 99.99% pure; any less and there are problems particle contaminates. In contrast, today's organic conducting polymers, including Light emitting homopolymers, copolymers, oligimers, and doped and undoped Fullerenes (buckyballs, and carbon nanotubes) have purities from 95% to 99.5% when ordered from companies like American Dye Source, which is one of the best. Until the OLED industry starts controlling their particles through better, more purified suspensions and moving production into class 10 clean rooms (which has been done, but only recently), they will continue to be plagued by these problems. Looks to Seiko Epson to lead the way for OLED displays. Many companies are using traditional silcon processes to manufacture their displays while integrating roll-to-roll processing. This process is traditionally accomplished through a series of shadow masks to lay the materials down in proper order (think really fine stencil). However, Sieko has adapted their current printing technology in order to use ink jetting coupled with roll to roll processing in what I think is a better production process overall. The OLED industry is going to revolutionize the world of displays. Because, the materials and processing are so cheap compared to silcon, companies are scrambling to develop the technology to produce displays for cellphones, PDA's, and other small devices in addition to tv's and computer displays. And, while they may be priced cheaper for the consumer, the companies will still make a tremendous profit from it.
Organic Light Emitting Displays are MADE OF PEOPLE!
I was just reading Philips' Research page on PolyLED technology. It's very informative for a layperson, though written before color OLED was shipping - I think in 2002. It has a nice graphic of some typical polymer molecules used: "poly(p-phenylenevinylene), and poly(fluorene". Apparently they're small molecules based on benzene-type rings (IANA organic-chemist). It also has a diagram of the device and descriptions of how it works, talking about electrons and holes and such.
It also talks about using dyes to modify output color, and mentions that efficiency (as of the time of writing) is about 4%, which is not high. Improvements have no doubt occurred since then.
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